Afzal Guru linked to militants since 1998, claims book ‘Aayina’ contains information about Guru’s life Azhar Qadri Tribune News Service Srinagar, August 10 Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, who was hanged last year, was linked to militancy since 1998 and was in charge of providing logistics to militants in operations outside Kashmir, a new book has revealed. The book, written by Guru in 2010 during his years in the Tihar Jail, contains information about his life as an overground worker for militants, his meetings with Ghazi Baba, who masterminded the Parliament attack, and his views about the situation in the subcontinent. Titled ‘Aayina’ (mirror), the book has a brief introductory note about Guru, which says he first joined militancy in the late 1980s, but distanced himself from it as he was not convinced about fighting on a “national and linguistic” basis. “In 1998, after a meeting with Ghazi Baba, (Guru) joined the jihad full-time and remained (with it) till the end,” it reads. It says Guru was “in charge” of a secretive “upper ground network” of militants and controlled logistics for “movement from Kashmir to India”. The book rejects theories propounded by a few writers and activists projecting Guru as a victim of conspiracy. A chapter written by Jaish-e-Mohammad commander Mufti Mohammad Asgar Khan Kashmiri has sharp criticism of those who projected Guru as a “common man” and dumped his relation to militancy in an attempt to prove him “innocent”. “It was a very crude way to prove him innocent. Such people should remain silent instead of writing and speaking anything,” the Jaish commander writes. Kashmiri writes that Guru’s secretive role as a militant operative was unknown even to his family. Kashmiri eulogises Guru as a “great martyr” and writes that he weaved such a “network” that any target in Kashmir could have been attacked within 24 hours and any target in India within a week. In the book, Guru writes that a meeting with Ghazi Baba in 1998 changed him and “induced a revolution in the days and nights of his life”. Ghazi Baba was the Jaish chief operational commander who was killed in a gunfight during a raid on his hideout in Srinagar in 2003. Guru has written extensively about meetings with his “mentor” Ghazi Baba and shares the details of their discussion on religion, politics, militancy and events after 9/11. In a chapter on Kashmir’s first suicide bomber, Afaq Shah, Guru provides a brief account of a meeting in which the 20-year-old Srinagar resident volunteered to drive an explosive-laden vehicle into the Army’s 15 Corps headquarters. It is not clear whether Guru wrote an eyewitness account or heard about the meeting. In the chapter titled ‘Taliban’, Guru writes about his and Ghazi Baba’s dejection over Pakistan joining the US war to topple the Islamic regime in Afghanistan. “When I asked Ghazi Baba what will happen now, he answered in a single word: Taliban,” Guru writes. This suggests that their meetings took place even during the two months between October, 2001, when the US attacked Afghanistan, and December, 2001, when militants attacked Parliament. Guru writes about an incident in which he went to a snow-covered mountain to meet Raashid, presumably Ghazi Baba’s deputy, where he saw a militant who had come from England. It is not clear whether the militant, whom Guru saw digging a cave hideout, was Birmingham resident Mohammad Bilal, alias Abdullah Bhai, the second suicide bomber. Bilal had blown an explosive-laden vehicle outside the headquarters of the Army in Srinagar. tribuneindia/2014/20140811/j&k.htm#4
Posted on: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 04:13:09 +0000
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